


the sound resounds, echo,

by newsagogo



Series: i didnt know i was broken 'til i wanted to change [6]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, technically some of the vs are around but im not tagging em cuz its brief. also the witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsagogo/pseuds/newsagogo
Summary: family is a strange thing. moreso when the two of you are effectively strangers meeting for the first time.
Relationships: The Girl & The Girl's Mother (Fabulous Killjoys)
Series: i didnt know i was broken 'til i wanted to change [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871935
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	the sound resounds, echo,

**Author's Note:**

> is this a similar tone to the rest of the series? mostly. i think. i did go 2nd person again oops.   
> uhhhh title from Crystallised by the xx

> Here's a question. It's the After of the After the end of the world, who are you?

You don't know who you are. While everyone comes to terms with the new freedom they've gained, you have to come to terms with all the loss you have - the gaps in memory where you know in your bones should be the faces and names of people you love.

You stand in a painfully white suit in desert sands and are overwhelmed with the feeling of this not being something you would choose to wear. You wander out of the crowds of people clearly reuniting with people they know - you don't have that, but you also see you are clearly one of the older people in that crowd.

You follow a Feeling out of what seems to be a cage shaped like a city and feel the wind tug at your hair. You don't think your hair was like this when- like this back wh-

~~back when you w-~~

you don't think your hair was like this Before. Another gap that hurts to focus on. You have a mind stuffed with shadows and TV static.

There is someone up ahead. Someone who Feels familiar.

> Here's a question. If a mother doesn't remember her child, barely knows herself, barely remembers having the child, is she still a mother?

You spend your days with a stranger. This stranger is, in fact, your own child. You have no memory of the little girl who stands in front of you, who clutches at your hands and cries. All you have is a feeling that she is Yours, so you pull her close as her happy tears turn mournful and do your best to give her comfort. 

She clutches and pulls at the back of your blazer like she's unsure of how to take it, unused to contact ~~(not like you are either with years under that soulsucking mask, ha.)~~ but not willing to let you go. You wipe her tears away. She calls you "mom" and you don't disagree. You can grow into that title, you think.

In the back of your mind, you feel the echo of a voice you should recognise making a joke about your mothering skills. When you try and focus on the voice you can only think of blue and loose feathers obscuring the rest and static fills your ears. You poke at the holes in your mind as you hold an unnamed girl, and try to ignore the worry you feel.

> Here's a question. If a woman isn't remembered by most anyone still breathing, was she ever really missed?

There are… imprints. In your vision. You wore a mask for many years and sometimes people move too fast and morph into horrific creatures and all you can do is try and hide the terror of it all from your girl (you remember a conversation with. with someone. about those masks. about those draculoids. Isn't it funny how they seem as desperate as you guys sometimes? you remember laughing. you aren't laughing now). Your girl always makes sure to make noise around you.

There are… imprints. In the zones. Your girl takes you around them and you pull her gently to stop in places where you remember bits and pieces of conversations - describe what once stood in an area now filled with wrecked buildings and burnt out husks. You look at a board in an empty radio station (theres a faint stench inside. you know what it means.) and see someone far older than you remember them and see the grown version of a kid who would shadow the old groups that- _that-_ old groups you remember leading and you know the faces in the photos and-

Oh, it isn't very motherly of you. Oh, you could be doing so much better, but you break down in front of your daughter and you _cry_ and she doesn't understand, she _can't_ , there's a world of difference between how loss is for the two of you but the tears come and they don't stop and-

Oh, to wake up in a strange world only to realise its even stranger now and all the people you tried to protect are dead or gone further than you can follow? To know you failed them? Ha, some _fucking_ leader you turned out to be! All that raging, all that screaming, all those years _wasted_ and you weren't even there for your own fucking daughter, what kinda piece of shit isn't even there to raise her daughter you just **had** to go and get _yourse-_

> Here's a question. If you came back from a place worse than hell only to find your friends dead or gone and your daughter grown up and the two of you effectively strangers, how would you bridge that gap?

Whatever gods are out there, they sure haven't been giving you many breaks, you know that much. Not like you care, though. Who cares if the gods will give you anything - you'll do it yourself from pure spite. You lost enough time, you are owed this.

You are a nameless mother - your legacy became you in the worst of ways - with a nameless daughter - carrying a legacy that wasn't hers. The two of you circle each other, testing out common grounds and learning what to avoid. You want to keep her safe and loved and she has gone far too long without either to fully trust the idea. She wants to know you and you have a memory that's more nightmares than people and spend oh so long picking through what a mother can tell her child.

It's the little things that connect you. You help her learn to care for her hair though your braiding skills have always needed more work and she whispers the state of life out here to you. She asks you for a name and you think of all the people whose faces or names you can't quite recall and promise to give her options. You never push her on what happened to her in the years she skips over and she never demands to know the names you wake up screaming when you dream of every little failure you did. The nights you wake up silent, you brush feathers away from your eyes and ache.

> Here's a question. One friend remains, how closely do you cling to each other?

Of all the bastards to make it, you aren't surprised in the least it's him (you are surprised he's alone but. well. you've heard why). He wears a blue you can remember telling him made him look like an ass and the memory would make you smile if it didn't show how much your being taken had affected him. He's packing up for travel, you suppose, when you see him and he looks up at you and drops what he holds. Your daughter takes a step back.

He sneers and calls you a crazy bitch and you roll your eyes and call him a pretentious cunt and then the two of you are hugging because it had been so long and you're all that's left and you had never been the closest Before but you both made it to the end, fuck the rest of 'em. The shared history lies heavy between you and you both ignore the tears when you seperate. He tells you he's leaving the shops - nothing holds him there now. You know what he means, and tell him it's for the best since he always looked dodgy enough to be a traveling salesman. He barks a laugh, and wipes at his eyes. He hands you a worn business card (a card that's got insults in yours and several others shitty handwriting cramped in the spaces) and says he'll visit. You promise to slam the door in his face before letting him in and he says he wouldn't have it any other way.

Neither of you would be able to stand being together with all that loss at once. You will sit, and sift through the pain little by little, visit by visit. Slowly, you will learn what to be to each other.

> Here's a question. What makes a family?

Families are what makes it out when the dust settles. The people you cling to and drag to parties to drown out the pain of the people who couldn't hold on. Blood has never been what mattered to you, and a part of you delights in how far that attitude seems to have spread. Your family is the girl you help pick a name in an empty building surrounded by the ghosts of old memories, is a man who stays never for more than a week as he sorts through your memories with you and carefully guides you back to old names. Your daughter has her cat (which watches nothing, now), her tall friends in the outer zones who always seeks them out when nearby, her two from the city who always find you to visit and look more and more changed each time, and you. 

These are the people both of you still have, and you decide to mother the people you girl brings - gods know they need some adult to care for them without expecting shit in return - and pass along all the skills you have from Before that seem to be less and less known in the Now. 

You'll never have everything (everyone) back. But that's alright. You've got your daughter, you've got more wild children to look out for who run towards her, and you have time now. You won't get the time you've lost back, but there's a future now you can use to make up for that.

**Author's Note:**

> at some point i need to think my title picking process thru more. yes i know i still didnt name them but you see 🤡🤡🤡


End file.
